It’s a comment I’ve heard uttered on numerous occasions recently, not least last week when the world was treated to a crash course (please forgive the pun) on how NOT to run a bank. I, for one, have taken that path and have got to the stage that only when I overhear a piece of good news on the TV playing in the background will my ears prick up and I listen.
The irony of it all is that even the media industry is feeling the pinch, brought about in the most part by the collective nervousness and lack of confidence in the short term future which they themselves helped whip up in the first place. If you were to believe what was being reported both in the Spanish and international press for example, you would think that everyone in Spain now sitting down to lump of stale bread for dinner each night whilst huddling round a candle flame for warmth. The media spends so much time feeding its audiences with doom and gloom that it is beginning to lose them as an audience.
The reality, of course, is quite different. Spain, as a big cog in the machinery of globalisation, is having its fair share of problems due to the world crisis and it’s unlikely that it will escape falling in recession alongside its European colleagues, probably next year, but at the moment there are plenty of reasons for optimism, depending on where you look for them. Business IT spending hasn’t dropped much, local legislation protected the Spanish banking system from contaminating itself with toxic mortgages, certain sectors are having difficulties recruiting enough qualified workers. And as for consumer spending - I challenge anyone to try and find a parking space in a shopping centre car park on a Saturday morning at the moment.
As PR professionals, we are used to presenting the positive side of things on behalf of our clients, even trained to do so. It’s not about ignoring problems when they occur, so much as looking for and finding ways of distributing information that directly or indirectly creates confidence and optimism about the subject in hand. We are all tired of so much bad tidings now so perhaps the world could take a leaf out of our manual and find something cheerful to talk about. Then maybe, just maybe, things will start to improve quicker than expected, and who knows, people may start watching the news again.
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